Dirtier than a pig sty

I don't remember how old I was, but I was either in grammar school or junior high when e. coli made its way into Jack in the Box burgers. That was the first time I heard the fast-food chain referred to as "Jack in the Crack." I remember the shock this discover brought upon people. My parents had an easy solution for our little 3-person family: stop eating at Jack in the Box. It was simple.

A few years later, contaminated Tylenol appeared on store shelves. We adopted the same policy: stop taking Tylenol; take Advil instead. Simple.

Those are the only "contamination" stories I remember from my childhood and adolescence. I guess there may have still been trace amounts of corporate decency in those days, just enough for companies to make products that didn't, well, kill people.

Those days are gone. Decency has been replaced in its entirety by corporate greed. Everything is made cheaply, sold expensively, and corners are cut at every chance while the prices soar. It reminds me of a line from the movie Armaggedon, when the Russian man in the space station is trying to work on a piece of machinery while choas runs rampant all around him. He says agrily, "Russian parts! American parts! All made in Taiwan!" Even as a 14-year-old, I understood the irony in that statement. However, 11 years later, the humor of it has become a dark reality to me.

It's not just Jack in the Box and Tylenol anymore. It's not just cheap materials being shipped off to foreign countries to be made into cheap products. In just the past 3-5 years, there have been recalls on everything from cars and child car seats, to heated dog beds and baby toys. Perhaps the scariest recalls are those of food, because by the time you realize your food was contaminated, you're sick, very sick. Packaged spinach. Garlic. Tomatoes. Beef. Peanuts. Pistachios. Fast food. Restaurant food. Grocery store food. Meat, veggies, fruit. Even bottled water. And then there's the freak viruses. SARS, bird flu, and now swine flu. And it's everywhere. China, Mexico, the United States. It no longer matters where your food came from, or where you are when you eat it.

I still follow my parents' advice. When tomatoes were the culprit, I stopped eating tomatoes. I stopped eating garlic that came from China. I stopped eating meat that came from Mexico.

Stories of food contamination and food-animal related illnesses are no longer few and far in between. I am no longer surprised when I hear of recalls, no matter what product the recall is for. It's so common now, the shock has worn off. Also, my faith in humanity has dwindled to an all-time low, as corporate greed rises to an all-time high. The peanut incident is a perfect example. The CEO of the peanut plant, which was in the United States, knew that the company's peanuts were contaminated. He knew people were going to get sick and even die. He knew. He did nothing. No, that's not true. He did something. He pushed even harder for all those peanuts to go into production. In court, the prosecution held up a container of peanut butter made with the company's peanuts and asked this so-called "man" if he would eat it. He said nothing. He would not eat the peanut butter. Yet he felt it was okay to put these same jars of peanut butter onto grocery store shelves, into chldren's food, into snacks. He did this all in the name of money.

What will be next? It could be anything and there's no way to know. This gives a whole new meaning to the anorexic's favorite saying: "What nourishes me destroys me." The only way to truly be safe would be to become a strict vegan and grow my own vegetables and fruits, and never enter a grocery store again in my life. However, that's not really an option for me right now and even if it were, I'm just not willing to spend the rest of my life making tofu from scratch.

In the end, I suppose I'm in the same sinking ship as everyone else in this cheap, money-hoarding country: at the mercy of capitalism and government indifference. Good luck to us!

Government I.O.U.? How About F.U.?

It's been a pretty long time since I last wrote in here. There have been a few things that have crossed my mind that may eventually make it here but, well, I've been busy.

However, what I heard this week has completely infuriated me and I'm not keeping my mouth shut this time.

Here in California, our so-called "governor" has decided to use IOUs instead of giving us working Americans our state tax refunds. Excuse me?!?! I was so appalled, I didn't beleive it the first time I heard it. I figured it had to be just another stupid idea being considered and that there was no way something like that could be approved. Apparently, I was giving our government way too much credit, as if they cared about us lowly citizens!

First of all, it's the government's fault we're in this economic crisis to begin with. It's certainly not the people's fault! We're the ones working and selling and buying, trying to do what little we can to help the economy, which we ultimately, as individuals, have little to no control over. Why should we have to pay for the government's mistakes? Why are they taking it out on us when WE'RE the ones losing our homes, losing our jobs and unable to find new work, unable or barely able to pay our bills, living off unemployment because we have no other options.

Some people say, "Well, we're going to get the money. We just don't know when. The government has no money so they have to give us IOUs." Hm, well, I have no money either. Does that mean I can give my landlord an IOU? How about the IRS? The DMV? My credit card company? Anybody?!?! No. Regardless of our situations, regardless of how hard we try and how frugal we are, the government wants its money from us and it wants it now. If we cannot provide it, the government will take it from us, or take anything of value we have. The goverment doesn't care if we end up jobless, or even homeless. It doesn't care if we can't afford health insurance or medication.

Yet the government finds it acceptable to give us, hard-working Americans, IOUs.

Celebrities and atheletes make millions. Money flows like lava from the pockets of politicians. The Bushes just spent almost half a million dollars on gold-rimmed plates for the White House. Sarah Palin, Cindy McCain, and probably Michelle Obama (though it wasn't as publicized) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on clothes for the campaigns, let alone how much was spent by both party's campaign groups over the entirety of the campaign. Illegal immigrants are given health insurance, drivers liscenses, almost free education, and jobs, while our own citizens lose their jobs, insurances, homes, and cannot afford a good education. It seems every day there is a new scandal in politics, another shady Senator, another embezzeling CEO, and on and on. Billions of dollars have been spent by the federal government to bail out failing companies, while some of those companies continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on fancy dinners to "entertain potential clients" or whatever the excuse-of-the-day is.

Yet the California government claims to be unable to provide the tax refund money that we have worked so hard for.

If you agree with this, feel free to post it onto your own site or blog.